The old sad song still works.
When “Hadestown” opened on Broadway in 2019, critics noted the chilling resonance of “Why We Build the Wall,” the act-one finale in which Hades leads the workers of the underworld in a call-and-response anthem equating confinement with freedom. Although Anaïs Mitchell wrote the number years before Donald Trump entered presidential politics, it seemed uncannily suited to his first administration.
Seven years later, Mitchell and director Rachel Chavkin’s folk-jazz retelling of Greek myth feels no less timely. Its portrait of fear, hunger, labor and authoritarian control leads to a larger question: How do you keep believing in art, love or change when the world gives you every reason to give up?
That question comes through forcefully in “Hadestown: The Musical,” a live stage capture filmed at London’s Lyric Theatre with the five original Broadway principals and now playing in movie theaters. Directed for the screen by Brett Sullivan, it remains Chavkin’s stage production, but the camera offers a more intimate perspective on its performances and design.
When Broadway returned from the pandemic shutdown, there was reason to believe professionally filmed productions might become commonplace. That promised wave never arrived. Such projects remain sporadic because they are expensive, logistically complicated and dependent upon extensive rights negotiations.
I grew up on capture recordings of “Pippin,” “Into the Woods,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Sunday in the Park with George.” Their value was access to shows and performances that may have predated you or been impossible to attend. More recent proshots have demonstrated how cinematic the form can be. “Hadestown” now joins them, with “Six: The Musical,” featuring the original West End queens, set to reach theaters in August.
The musical combines the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone. Orpheus (Reeve Carney), a dreamy musician with an unfinished song, falls for Eurydice (Eva Noblezada), who is more concerned with warmth, food and survival. When Hades (Patrick Page) lures her to the underworld, Orpheus follows, hoping his song can win her release.
Carney brings a delicate falsetto, openhearted sincerity and trembling idealism to Orpheus. Noblezada gives Eurydice toughness and vulnerability, while the camera catches the fear, hunger and regret behind her choices. The intimacy of the screen also heightens the connection between the two performers.
Page and Amber Gray are magnetic as Hades and Persephone, whose poisoned marriage supplies some of the musical’s richest texture. With his cavernous bass voice and severe bearing, Page makes Hades a factory boss and salesman of false security. Gray’s Persephone is funny, sexy, furious and sad, a goddess of spring trying to drink and dance through centuries of disappointment.
André De Shields, reprising his Tony-winning performance as Hermes, remains the ideal guide: stylish, amused, watchful and seemingly in command of both the story and the room.
Sullivan’s best choices are revealing rather than flashy. Close-ups capture Eurydice’s panic and the flashes of anger and lingering affection between Hades and Persephone. A view through the center of the revolving stage provides a perspective unavailable from the house.
The camera also brings out the details of Rachel Hauck’s smoky barroom-meets-underworld set, David Neumann’s whirring choreography, which makes the workers appear like parts of a vast industrial machine, and Bradley King’s lighting, which shifts from the warm glow of the world above to the harsh glare, deep shadows and swinging lamps of the underworld.
No proshot can fully replicate live theater. “Wait for Me,” overwhelming in person as swinging lamps cut through the darkness, loses some force on screen, and a few audience cutaways are unnecessary. But with the Broadway production still running at the Walter Kerr Theatre, the film serves a different purpose. It preserves the performances that helped define the show, reveals details unavailable from most theater seats and confirms that “Hadestown” still has plenty to tell us.
In movie theaters through July 28. bleeckerstreetmedia.com/
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